57 Quotes By Joseph Addison


True happiness arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one's self, and in the next, from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions.
Joseph Addison on happiness

Suspicion is not less an enemy to virtue than to happiness he that is already corrupt is naturally suspicious, and he that becomes suspicious will quickly be corrupt.
Joseph Addison on happiness

Cheerfulness is the best promoter of health and is as friendly to the mind as to the body.
Joseph Addison on health

Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.
Joseph Addison on hope

If you wish to succeed in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother, and hope your guardian genius.
Joseph Addison on hope

If we hope for what we are not likely to possess, we act and think in vain, and make life a greater dream and shadow than it really is.
Joseph Addison on hope

Everything that is new or uncommon raises a pleasure in the imagination, because it fills the soul with an agreeable surprise, gratifies its curiosity, and gives it an idea of which it was not before possessed.
Joseph Addison on imagination

The utmost extent of man's knowledge, is to know that he knows nothing.
Joseph Addison on knowledge

Irregularity and want of method are only supportable in men of great learning or genius, who are often too full to be exact, and therefore they choose to throw down their pearls in heaps before the reader, rather than be at the pains of stringing them.
Joseph Addison on learning

No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority.
Joseph Addison on legal

Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.
Joseph Addison on life

Man is subject to innumerable pains and sorrows by the very condition of humanity, and yet, as if nature had not sown evils enough in life, we are continually adding grief to grief and aggravating the common calamity by our cruel treatment of one another.
Joseph Addison on life

If you wish to succeed in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother, and hope your guardian genius.
Joseph Addison on life

Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.
Joseph Addison on love

Music, the greatest good that mortals know and all of heaven we have hear below.
Joseph Addison on music

Nothing is capable of being well set to music that is not nonsense.
Joseph Addison on music

Man is subject to innumerable pains and sorrows by the very condition of humanity, and yet, as if nature had not sown evils enough in life, we are continually adding grief to grief and aggravating the common calamity by our cruel treatment of one another.
Joseph Addison on nature

The stars shall fade away, the sun himself Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years, But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth, Unhurt amidst the wars of elements, The wrecks of matter, and the crush of worlds.
Joseph Addison on nature

There is not so variable a thing in nature as a lady's head-dress.
Joseph Addison on nature

Mutability of temper and inconsistency with ourselves is the greatest weakness of human nature.
Joseph Addison on nature